Persistent Memory

Simon Gatineau

Description:

Bio:

Legal adviser, former minor politician in Portland, ex-patient of Morningside Sanitarium. He collected fraternal orders like some people collect stamps, and belonged to the Silver Twilight. According to Simon, he met fellow pipe aficionado Michael Kay at one of the Twilight meetings and often traded tobacco blends with him. One blend he acquired drove him mad with visions and destroyed his ability to retain most memories. He began taking extensive notes, although these notes were just nonsensical scrawls on paper – nonsensical to everyone but Simon. Becoming incoherent and paranoid, his wife committed him to the Morningside Sanitarium. He refused to speak to men, considering them part of “the plot”, and had a special animosity for the catatonic Douglas Ryder (if he was ever actually at Morningside, which is not true according to Mr. Ryder). Simon opened up to Clara while a patient, talking about an apocalyptic vision he’d had regarding a vast tree of flame, a shattering of the earth, a cavernous complex beneath the sea, and a gleaming city destroyed by monstrosities. Detective Butler asked Our Heroes to follow up with Simon, presuming that he had information that could damn the Silver Twilight.

Following the trail to Forest Grove – where Simon was living in a house purchased by Michael Kay – the trio found an abattoir full of bizarre scents, eyeballs of livestock preserved in jars, and dismembered animals. Following the trail outside, they uncovered the body of a missing drifter and a sweat-lodge where Simon resided, inhaling strange fumes… and sprouting tentacles from his split abdomen. After several bullets and a swift retreat that resulted in a wrecked car, the trio met up with Troy Valjean. His shotgun and packing van proved invaluable in getting everyone away from the corrupted corpses of Simon and the drifter.

From a found sheet in the Kay/Gatineau house:

Tree of fire grows from the barren desert
Stone of green born from the hearthheart of a sun
they rise from the bone and the blood
Crack the fault to disinter That Sleeper beneath the sea
too far south they looked too far south up is now down and the
stars have realigned
my EYES are too LIMITEDMUST try others
this game we’ve played before but now we can harness the
second sun
Marian, Clara – what can you SEE?